My work so far with UBC and the High School practicum have been mainly either hands on, tossed in the deep end, face to face class work with students, or isolated lonely time in the Neville Scarf library finding sources for papers and essays.  So starting this new position at the gallery has been a dramatic shift toward something different.  For one, I’m in contact with a lot of people all the time, talking, and working together to get things done.  There’s still a lot of personal work to be done, but I’ve never collaborated the way they seem to do at the gallery in my own work.  What is specifically new to my experience is the amount of meetings they have.

At my secondary practicum school I think I went to two very small, and very short meetings with the department in the 10 weeks that I was there.  Since being at the gallery for 3 days I have been to 4 meetings, two of which occurred today.  I even had to speak about what I had been doing so far with the gallery to people from a very prominent foundation.  So not only am I sharing my ideas, my work, and my specific skill set (education) with my direct supervisor at the gallery, I’m also sharing it with the directors, the marketing team, the volunteers, and several other staff as well.  So far I really like it, seeing the ideas that people have, seeing how events and planning are done behind the scenes, it all feels very administrative but also very engaging with the audience the meetings are meant to benefit.  Just been a new day every day so far with the experience and I feel a lot of it will help me be more vocal if I ever end up at a school as a teacher.

Today has been another day of reading, writing, and note taking.  Which to me is just fine, I really enjoy learning new information, especially about something I’m interested in but don’t know a whole lot about.  Today’s focus has been all about the Cedar tree, and indigenous uses of wood for tools, cultural practices, and other forms of daily life that were facilitated with the use of cedar trees.  I have a neat book by Hilary Stewart entitled “Cedar”, that outlines and details the importance of trees for the Haida people to develop their culture.

I also had the big meeting with my Faculty Adviser and two members of the Gallery Staff to solidify my understandings of what I was doing in the gallery for my CFE.  Turns out, they’re incredibly interested in developing a hands-on lab of some sort that will focus on the importance of wood, trees, and forests in relation to indigenous cultures, specifically in Haida Gwaii (though it could easily transfer to other West Coast indigenous groups).  So my job it would seem is to compile and create all the needed resources (education ones) that would be needed to have an hour or two long lab within the gallery.  To me this is an excellent opportunity to use some of the activity making skills I learned during my practicum, as labs are often more about touching, seeing, and interacting with material rather than simply learning content from a power point or a book.  Students often learn much better when they fully integrate themselves with the material they’re studying, so if the gallery wants students to learn more about wood and its importance to indigenous cultures then the best way to do that is to have a lab like the one I hope to create.

Now that I have my focus I feel like I can really create a more concrete timeline of “due dates” for the information I gather, and for the project I create as a whole.  So here goes nothing.

P.S. I realize this post is a day late.  Everyday from now on!

Here are some of the cool photos from the book Cedar

Stewart, Hilary. Cedar: Tree of Life to the Northwest Coast Indians. Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 1995.  (Making a citation just in case I need to)

So today was my first real day in the gallery, and there is just non-stop information I need to look into and research.  For now it’s all about figuring out the focus that the gallery wants me to work on, then finding the content, activities, and resources I need to execute a good lesson / program for the gallery.

Thankfully today I got the low down on the necessary criteria they want me to work on, and for the particular grades the focus will center around (Grades 9 and 12)

From what I’ve experienced so far the content I’m to be working with ties directly into much of the IRP material for socials curriculum.  Everything I’ve read so far today has reaffirmed things I’ve learned in my classes not only during the Bachelor of Education program, but also in my own interests in history and first nations issues.  Main ideas I’m throwing around in my head are: the importance of the cedar tree, the potlatch and ceremonial masks, repatriation of cultural artifacts, protection of the forest and it’s impact on future generations, indigenous people’s connection to land, oral history, and maybe woodcarving.

Hopefully tomorrow solidifies the ideas I’ve got because right now it feels kind of directionless, but informed.

Here is just some of my notes so far.

Starting this experience I have been racked with apprehension and anxiety.  I feel like it’s normal reasons behind this: starting a new position, leaving an old one, having almost no idea what I would be doing at the gallery.  Thankfully meeting up with my supervisor allowed a lot of those issues to go away.  We met up and had lunch, went over the expectations, and shared resources to help me start moving forward with the community field experience.

Today’s experience was actually pretty fun too.  The Bill Reid Gallery folks were going to a couple of schools to put on short presentations for the Pro-D days going on in several of the districts, and it really resonated with what is expected of me.  Essentially they presented teachers with the opportunity to take their classes, their expectations with education, and their knowledge of pedagogical theories, and apply it within the context of the gallery.  What they were looking for is to use the facilities, the artifacts, and the space of the Bill Reid Gallery to help the gallery develop better programs to help students who come to their gallery to better engage with the material.  Teaching indigenous issues can often be very challenging for teachers who generally come from a non-indigenous background.  Many find it uncomfortable to teach about things they don’t know enough about.  What the gallery was proposing is to make dialogue with teachers in order to empower them to take on the challenge of educating their students about things that may be uncomfortable, like indigenous issues, by interacting with the materials the gallery has.  Very cool stuff, and I’m looking forward to adding my own perspective to helping the gallery achieve their goals.